Getting Crafty to Help Save Elephants

Photo Credit: jerroldconnors on Instagram

Elegrams are a creative craft project for all ages that will help save elephants, increase awareness for African elephants, and also raise funds for The Nature Conservancy’s work to increase security for them!

About 20,000 little elephants will start their life's journey this year - at a time when it's never been tougher to be an elephant. That's why we're calling on elephant supporters like you to help us collect 20,000 images of elephants by next summer. We're calling them "elegrams."

Crayons, cupcakes, pen doodles, yarn, paint -- you can make an elegram out of almost anything. (Photos of real elephants don't count though.)

It's simple: Make an elegram, snap a photo, and post it to social media using the hashtag #elegram or upload your image directly to our online gallery.

View the gallery for inspiration and see who else has posted elegrams, including musician Brett Dennen’s beautiful drawing of an elephant on his Martin LXM guitar.

Your elegram will do 2 important things for elephants:

* It'll help us engage a lot more people. Friends are much more likely to pass around an image you make than an upsetting news story about the poaching crisis. Please simply add a caption that says: "Elephants need our help."

* As a big bonus, some generous Nature Conservancy donors have pledged at least $23,000 to our work to protect elephants IF we reach our 20,000 goal.

This builds on The Nature Conservancy’s recently launched campaign to generate support for our work on African elephants and the illegal ivory trade. We worked with Martin Guitar and their celebrity elephant ambassadors including Paul McCartney, Dierks Bentley, and James Valentine of Maroon 5 – www.nature.org/elephants